The National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) by the Ministry of Education, Government of India aims at ranking Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) in the country every year. It is conceived as a credible source of information about HEIs in the country for the student community and society. It is considered credible because it has the seal of the Government of India and is perceived as a source to remove the information asymmetry between students and institutions in which they seek admissions.
The number of participating institutions in NIRF 2020 was 3,771, almost doubling to 6,517 in NIRF 2024, which is evidence of its increasing popularity. Private institutions, banking on this framework and its credibility, use the NIRF ranks assigned to them as proof of the quality of education in their institutions and use that liberally if not as the sole marketing tool.
Apart from the opaque nature of the ranking framework, the dramatic variations in the ranking given to some of the well-established government institutions every year raise questions about the main purpose of this exercise. Criticism abounds regarding the validity of the criteria used in the framework. A key criticism is that some of the criteria are loaded against state government-owned institutions whose mandates are set by the respective governments.
The need for ranking higher educational institutions is mainly to bridge the information gap for prospective students about quality and performance of HEIs. We try to understand whether the NIRF bridges this information gap or extends it, highlight some of the pitfalls in the criteria used, and provide possible alternatives for revamping it to enhance the robustness of the framework.
Ranking as an information tool
Any ranking system works as a good information tool only if it compares institutions on an equal footing. It creates more confusion if the relative performance of a wide array of institutions with different institutional, governance and operational setups are compared under a broader umbrella as universities.
India has different higher education institutions, such as centrally funded institutions, centrally funded technical institutions, central universities, state universities, private universities, and deemed universities. All these institutions are governed by different acts and institutional setups, but the criteria used to assess their relative performance remain the same. Pooling all these institutions on the same platter for comparison is unfair for the following reasons.
Many private universities are predominantly medical or engineering colleges that gained the status of a university. On the other hand, many government universities are holistic institutions that impart education in arts, humanities, social sciences, and sciences. The educational focus also differs as private institutions concentrate more on the employability of their students while government institutions emphasize knowledge creation and research orientation.
On the operational part, there is a huge difference between private and government institutions, with more flexibility available for the former on all fronts, including fees, salary structure, recruitment, and admission of students. The institutional rigidities of state-funded institutions are built in the relevant acts of the Parliament or State Assemblies. Further, much of the activities in private institutions are not in the public domain for any scrutiny, be it academic or financial matters.
Pitfalls in criteria
The NIRF uses five broad criteria: Teaching, Learning and Resources; Research and Professional Practice; Graduation Outcome; Outreach and Inclusivity; and Perception. The Perception criterion, which accounts for 10 percent of the scoring, is a black box, majorly derived from a survey on the perception about the institution from academic peers and employers. The problem with this criterion is its subjectivity and limited survey base, so such a subjective criterion is better dropped in a quantitative performance assessment.
Teaching, Learning and Resources has a sub-criterion on financial resource utilization that evaluates the average capital and operational expenditures per student by the institution over the last three years. Interestingly, what is missing here are the revenue aspects; we cannot compare the fee structure of government institutions to that of a private institution.
A severe pitfall in the ranking framework is that it does not consider the cost of education to acquire an equivalent qualification across institutions. So, a better metric to evaluate the financial aspect of education should be in terms of the private and social cost of education for the students because the sources of finances alter the institutional structure, accountability, regulatory force and so on.
Research and Professional Practice predominantly scores the citation index of research outputs from the institution. The citation index has merits and demerits depending on the popularity of the research area and subject. While it is impossible to decompose the quality and popularity of these citations, it can be standardized subject-wise and compared across institutions.
Graduation Outcome literally measures the pass percentage of the institution; what it fails to account for is the difference in undergraduate and post-graduate outcomes. In post-graduate and doctoral research programs, the difference in enrolment and passing out may be due to students leaving the course after getting a job with their already acquired qualifications that cannot be compared. Therefore, the criterion should be appropriately discounted for this effect. Another aspect of the criterion is that it can lead to grade inflation among the institutions to acquire better ranking status.
Outreach and inclusivity criteria measure regional and gender diversity in institutions, as well as their contribution to including economically and socially backward and physically challenged students. The problem with this criterion is mainly for the state government-funded institutions, as there is a limited scope to accommodate students from other states and that naturally brings their scores down. Central universities are mandated to have regional diversity in their student population.
Further, a private institution can provide a full-fee waiver for economically and socially backward students through cross-subsidy as their fee structure differentiates students by economic status. Whereas in the government-funded institutions, education is subsidized for all. Therefore, we suggest a metric based on the proportion of economically and socially backward and physically challenged students admitted to the institution can be a proper measure of inclusivity.
In the entire scheme of things, some new criteria warrant inclusion in evaluation, even with a minimal weightage. First and foremost, some of the cultural and environmental factors should be considered. Institutions with large and green campuses should be given weight in the scoring for the ecological benefits derived by the students.
Towards more informed choices
Education is an experiential good. With partial information derived from the ranking perspective, students are forced to pick the wrong good.
It is better to redesign NIRF in such a way as to rank institutions in the comparable pool with precise information to the students that each pool is unique. NIRF should be a tool that puts information upfront and fair and square so prospective students can make informed choices.
The failure of regulatory agencies such as UGC, AICTE, and other professional bodies to bridge the information gap cannot be stemmed by accreditation or ranking systems alone. Regulatory bodies must play a significant role in removing the information asymmetry and changing the market structure in favour of the students. Transparency in regulation and voluntary disclosure of all activities of the academic institutions for public scrutiny will be a great effort to remove this information asymmetry and enable informed choices by the students.
(S Raja Sethu Durai is Professor, BITS-Pilani, Dubai and R. Srinivasan is Member, State Planning Commission, Government of Tamil Nadu)
